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Meet The Keep: the British footwear label designing shoes to stay
The Gatherer · Sustainable Footwear
Most of us have a pair of shoes we've never let go of. They've been resoled, reheeled and worn through a dozen winters, and they still go with everything. The Keep was built around that feeling.
The name says it plainly. These are shoes designed to be kept: pieces that work with what's already in your wardrobe and look as right in five years' time as they did on the day you bought them. For founders Ali Maclean and Jemma Cotterrell, that is the most honest answer to fashion's waste problem. If you love something for longer, you need less of everything else.
The founders
Ali and Jemma met twenty years ago, working together on the footwear collections for Nicole Farhi and Lulu Guinness. Ali is a footwear and accessories designer and Jemma a stylist. Between them they have spent two decades seeing what makes a shoe really good, and what makes one end up at the back of the cupboard.
They share a love of beautifully made shoes with a bit of personality, never quite plain and never trend-led. When they came together to launch their own brand, they chose a deliberately slow approach. That means fewer styles, considered designs, and an invitation to invest in quality over quantity.
The collection
Each style is named after something from the British hedgerow and orchard: Damson, Hawthorn, Quince, Rowan and Russet. The palette follows suit, with deep aubergine, olive, slate, chocolate and tan alongside classic black and a warm metallic gold. It's a grown-up, wearable colour story that sits as easily with denim and knitwear as with a slip dress or a tailored trouser.
The Hawthorn loafer is a good example of their thinking. It's a timeless shape, carefully proportioned and finished, and made in shades that feel quietly special without shouting.
The craft
The Keep's shoes are designed in London and made in Spain by a team of artisan shoemakers, using high-quality Spanish leathers. Production is fully traceable, so the brand knows exactly where and how every pair is made.
Their approach to materials goes beyond looking the part. All of the leather used across the range is a by-product of the food industry, so nothing is produced for its hide alone. It is processed only in Leather Working Group (LWG) certified tanneries, which are independently assessed on their environmental standards, including chemical management, water use and waste. The linings are 100% chrome-free, avoiding one of the most harmful chemicals commonly used in conventional leather tanning.
Why it matters
Footwear is one of the hardest areas of fashion to get right sustainably. Cheap shoes rarely last a season and are almost impossible to recycle, so they end up in landfill fast. The Keep's answer is refreshingly simple: make fewer, better shoes, from responsibly sourced materials, in designs you won't tire of.
It's a philosophy we recognise at Gather&See. The most sustainable piece in your wardrobe is the one you keep wearing, and The Keep has made that its entire reason for being. In their own words, these are shoes you'll want to wear endlessly "and keep, forever."
